Tsunamis Pound Chile’s Coastal Towns in Quake’s Wake

PELLEHUE, Chile –The massive earthquake that rocked Chile early Saturday and the tsunamis that followed it have devastated the Andean nation’s coastal communities.

The Associated Press

People walk along the shore after an earthquake in Pelluhue, some 322 kms, about 200 miles, southwest of Santiago, on Sunday.

Several seaside resort towns were severely hit by the quake and ensuing waves. Such was the fate Pelluhue, and its roughly 1,000 residents.

“The earth started shaking so violently that we couldn’t stand,” said Maria Julia Aguilar, who was vacationing with her husband in Pelluhue. They struggled to their feet and fled by car into the hills above the town. She said the air was filled with the tidal waves’ loud crushing of houses along the shoreline.

In one spot, the waves had harpooned 70-foot-high Cypress trees into beachfront homes, while washing other houses up onto the mountainside above the beachfront town. Plywood and housing materials littered the coast and floated offshore.

When Aguilar returned to the site shortly after dawn, she saw four bodies half-buried in the sand.

Residents said a series of waves started to reach shore shortly after the 8.8 magnitude quake struck at 0634 GMT Saturday. The first waves hit about five minutes after the quake, while the biggest one slammed into the town about an hour later.

Clara Lepe was asleep in her beachfront home when the quake jarred her awake. She fled with her husband and two daughters, racing away from the beach in their four-wheel drive vehicle. In the panic, Lepe said two cars crashed head-on as panicked residents tried to get away from the shore.

“People were going crazy,” she said with tears in her eyes. “It was utter chaos.”